Category: Horizon

Intro

Ever since I saw Alan Renouf’s vCheck script first in action years ago it has been one of the tools I have been promoting to use for daily checks. The fact that you can disable and enable plugins makes it a flexible adjustable solution that helped me preventing companies having big problems or proving that I have been warning them about things for weeks or months. Also I have whipped many colleague or customer around the ears with questions why they didn’t remove those snapshot they created 3 days before

Getting started

Fast forward until a couple of months ago when I saw those release note’s for PowerCli 6.5 with more options to talk to the Horizon View api’s. This immediately gave me the idea to build a set of vCheck scripts for Horizon View. One of the first things to do was finding out how the vCheck framework actually works. This turned out to be a matter of outputting the info you would like in the output as if it is on the command line. Also adding a section that contains a description helps in building the output:

$Title = "Composer Servers Status"
$Header = "Composer Servers Status"
$Comments = "These are the used Composer Servers"
$Display = "Table"
$Author = "Wouter Kursten"
$PluginVersion = 0.1
$PluginCategory = "View"

The 2nd thing to do is deciding on what checks needed to be build. After checking on the vExpert slack and with some co-workers and friends I came up with a shortlist:

• Dashboard error status (Sean Massey)
• Desktops with error (non-standard) status (Myself,Sean Massey)
• Compare the Snapshots that have been set to the ones actually used on desktops to see if recompose might not have run (Brian Suhr, myself)
• relation between Composer and vCenter (Kevin Leclaire)
• last use time for dedicated desktops (Kees Baggeman)
• Event Database status
• Connection,composer,security server status
• Information and status about the various desktop pool types
• RDS farm status

Getting things done

Before actually building any checks a connecton has to be made this is done in the Connection plugin:

$Title = "Connection settings for View"
$Author = "Wouter Kursten"
$PluginVersion = 0.1
$Header = "Connection Settings"
$Comments = "Connection Plugin for connecting to View"
$Display = "None"
$PluginCategory = "View"

# Start of Settings
# Please Specify the address of one of the connection servers or the address for the general View environment
$Server = "Servername"
# Maximum number of samples to gather for events
$MaxSampleVIEvent = 100000
# Please give the user account to connect to Connection Server
$hvcsUser= "username"															
# Please give the domain for the user to connect to Connection Server
$hvcsDomain = "domain"														

# End of Settings



# Credential file for the user to connect to the Connection Server
$hvcsPassword = get-content .\hvcs_Credentials.txt | convertto-securestring		
# Credential file for the User configured n View to connect to the Database
$hvedbpassword=get-content .\hvedb_Credentials.txt | convertto-securestring   	

# Loading 
Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.HorizonView
Import-Module VMware.VimAutomation.Core

# --- Connect to Horizon Connection Server API Service ---
$hvServer1 = Connect-HVServer -Server $server -User $hvcsUser -Password $hvcsPassword -Domain $hvcsDomain

# --- Get Services for interacting with the View API Service ---
$Services1= $hvServer1.ExtensionData

# --- Connect to the view events database ---
#$eventdb=connect-hvevent -dbpassword $hvedbpassword

# --- Get Desktop pools
$pools=(get-hvpool)

As you might notice the vmware.hv.helper plugin is required to do this.

The first real check I decided to build was to see if the desktops are actually build on the same snapshot as configured on pool level. With this you are able to see if a recompose ran into trouble. Let me highlight some of the code:

if ($pool.type -like "*automated*" -AND $pool.source -like "*VIEW_COMPOSER*"){

There are a couple of pooltypes and one of them is automated, since we’re looking for linked clones we also need to make sure the pool source is VIEW_COMPOSER if this says VIRTUAL_CENTER you’re looking at full clones.

$wrongsnaps=$poolmachines | where {$_.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagesnapshotpath -notlike  $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath -OR $_.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagesnapshotpath -notlike $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath}

I could have shortened this one by defining a couple of variables but this gives an impression of how deep you might have to go to get the required data. WHat I do is check if the snapshot has the same name AND if the selected source VM has the same name if either of the two is different the vm wil be entered on the output.

$wrongsnapdesktops+= New-Object PSObject -Property @{"VM Name" = $wrongsnap.base.name;
								"VM Snapshot" = $wrongsnap.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagesnapshotpath;
								"VM GI" = $wrongsnap.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagepath;
								"Pool Snapshot" = $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath;
								"Pool GI" = $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.parentvmpath;

Last of the real code is about displaying the actual info for the desktop.

This all results in the following plugin, be aware that this might be a bit slow to run since it needs go go trough all desktops. For my customer it takes about 3 minutes on 1350 desktops.

# Start of Settings
# End of Settings


$wrongsnapdesktops=@()
foreach ($pool in $pools){
$poolname=$pool.base.name
if ($pool.type -like "*automated*" -AND $pool.source -like "*VIEW_COMPOSER*"){

$poolmachines=get-hvmachine ($pool.base.name)
$wrongsnaps=$poolmachines | where {$_.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagesnapshotpath -notlike  $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath -OR $_.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagesnapshotpath -notlike $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath}
foreach ($wrongsnap in $wrongsnaps){
$wrongsnapdesktops+= New-Object PSObject -Property @{"VM Name" = $wrongsnap.base.name;
								"VM Snapshot" = $wrongsnap.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagesnapshotpath;
								"VM GI" = $wrongsnap.managedmachinedata.viewcomposerdata.baseimagepath;
								"Pool Snapshot" = $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.snapshotpath;
								"Pool GI" = $pool.automateddesktopdata.VirtualCenternamesdata.parentvmpath;
}
}
}
}
$wrongsnapdesktops

$Title = "VDI Desktops based on wrong snapshot"
$Header = "VDI Desktops based on wrong snapshot"
$Comments = "These desktops have not been recomposed with the correct Golden Image Snapshot"
$Display = "Table"
$Author = "Wouter Kursten"
$PluginVersion = 0.1
$PluginCategory = "View"

And this is how it looks:

Another script I already made is a simple one to get the status of all full clone pools. Not really fancy but it gets information about what template is used as the base and several counts for the various status of desktops:

# Start of Settings
# End of Settings

$fullpoolstatus=@()
foreach ($pool in $pools){
$poolname=$pool.base.name
if ($pool.type -like "*automated*" -AND $pool.source -like "*VIRTUAL_CENTER*"){
$desktops=get-hvmachinesummary -pool $poolname
$fullpoolstatus+=New-Object PSObject -Property @{"Name" = $Poolname;
								"Template" = $pool.AutomatedDesktopData.VirtualCenterNamesData.TemplatePath;
								"Desktop_Count" = ($desktops).count;
								"Desktops_Unassigned" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.User -eq $null}).count;
								"Available" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "AVAILABLE"}).count;
								"Connected" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "CONNECTED"}).count;
								"Disconnected" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "DISCONNECTED"}).count;
								"Maintenance" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "MAINTENANCE"}).count;
								"Provisioning" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "PROVISIONING"}).count;
								"Customizing" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "CUSTOMIZING"}).count;
								"Already_Used" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "ALREADY_USED"}).count;
								"Agent_Unreachable" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "AGENT_UNREACHABLE"}).count;
								"Error" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "ERROR"}).count;
								"Deleting" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "DELETING"}).count;
								"Provisioning_Error" = ($desktops | where {$_.base.basicstate -eq "PROVISIONING_ERROR"}).count;
}
}
}
$fullpoolstatus | select Name,Template,Desktop_Count,Desktops_Unassigned,Available,Connected,Disconnected,Maintenance,Provisioning,Customizing,Already_Used,Agent_Unreachable,Error,Deleting,Provisioning_Error
$Title = "Full Clone Desktop Pool Status"
$Header = "Full Clone Desktop Pool Status"
$Comments = "These are all pools with full clones and their most common counters"
$Display = "Table"
$Author = "Wouter Kursten"
$PluginVersion = 0.1
$PluginCategory = "View"

and again this is how it can look:

Github

After Alan Renouf saw me posting screenshots on Twitter he offered to setup a github project for this. Last week this was done and I have already done my first few commits. Hopefully more people will jump on the bandwagon so we can make this check as awesome as the original is.